- Texas State University
Department of Philosophy
601 University Drive
Comal 102
San Marcos, Texas, 78666
Matt Bower
Texas State University, Philosophy, Department Member
- University of Memphis, Philosophy, Alumnusadd
- Phenomenology, Continental Philosophy, Embodiment, Phenomenology of Temporality, Edmund Husserl, Philosophy of Mind, and 49 moreEmbodied Cognition, Cognitive Science, Enactive cognition, Enactivism, Extended Mind, Emotion, Ethical Theory, Philosophy, Consciousness, Dynamical Systems, Biosemiotics, Mood, Affordance Theory, James J. Gibson, History of Philosophy, Cognitive archaeology, Inter-affectivity, Practical knowledge, Genetic Phenomenology, Maine de Biran, Felix Ravaisson, Mental Representation, Distributed Cognition, Ecological Psychology, Habitus, Intentionality, Social Cognition, Perception, Affect/Emotion, Embodied and Enactive Cognition, Intersubjectivity, Social Interaction, Affordances, Representation, Cognitive development, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Philosophy of perception, Mental Representation and Content, Affect, Philosophy of Cognitive Science, Cognitive Sciences, Phenomenology of the body, Jean Piaget, Embodied Mind and Cognition, Embodied and Distributed Cognition, Developmental Psychology, Philosophy of Psychiatry, Naive Realism, and Disjunctivismedit
Several commentators have recently attributed conflicting accounts of the relation between veridical perceptual experience and hallucination to Husserl. Some say he’s a proponent of the conjunctive view that the two kinds of experience... more
Several commentators have recently attributed conflicting accounts of the relation between veridical perceptual experience and hallucination to Husserl. Some say he’s a proponent of the conjunctive view that the two kinds of experience are fundamentally the same. Others deny this and purport to find in Husserl distinct and non-overlapping accounts of their fundamental natures, thus committing him to a disjunctive view. My goal is to set the record straight. Having briefly laid out the problem under discussion and the terms of the debate, I then review the proposals that have been advanced, disposing of some and marking others for further consideration. A.D. Smith’s disjunctive reading is among the latter. I discuss it at length and argue that Smith fails to show that Husserl’s views on perceptual experience entail a form of disjunctivism. Following that critical discussion, I present a case for a conjunctive reading of Husserl’s account of perceptual experience.
Research Interests: Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Perception, Phenomenology, Continental Philosophy, and 8 moreEdmund Husserl, Disjunctivism, Philosophy of perception, Husserl, Husserlian phenomenology, Philosophy of Mind; Philosophy of Perception; Phenomenology, Hallucinations, and Perception, Hallucination, Naive Realism
Access here: https://sites.google.com/site/mattembower/ Despite extensive discussion of naïve realism in the wider philosophical literature, those influenced by the phenomenological movement who work in the philosophy of perception... more
Access here: https://sites.google.com/site/mattembower/
Despite extensive discussion of naïve realism in the wider philosophical literature, those influenced by the phenomenological movement who work in the philosophy of perception have hardly weighed in on the matter. It is thus interesting to discover that Edmund Husserl’s close philosophical interlocutor and friend, the early twentieth-century phenomenologist Johannes Daubert, held the naive realist view. I present Daubert’s views on the fundamental nature of perceptual experience and show how they differ radically from those of Husserl’s. I argue, in conclusion, that Daubert’s views are superior to those of Husserl’s specifically in the way that they deal with the phenomenon of perceptual constancy.
Despite extensive discussion of naïve realism in the wider philosophical literature, those influenced by the phenomenological movement who work in the philosophy of perception have hardly weighed in on the matter. It is thus interesting to discover that Edmund Husserl’s close philosophical interlocutor and friend, the early twentieth-century phenomenologist Johannes Daubert, held the naive realist view. I present Daubert’s views on the fundamental nature of perceptual experience and show how they differ radically from those of Husserl’s. I argue, in conclusion, that Daubert’s views are superior to those of Husserl’s specifically in the way that they deal with the phenomenon of perceptual constancy.
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Levinas is usually discussed as a philosopher wrestling with the nature of our experience of others, ethical obligation, and the divine. That's understandable, because his work is mostly organized around those themes. Unlike other... more
Levinas is usually discussed as a philosopher wrestling with the nature of our experience of others, ethical obligation, and the divine. That's understandable, because his work is mostly organized around those themes. Unlike other phenomenologists, such as Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty, he is not often mentioned in discussions about issues in philosophy of mind. That is not because Levinas says nothing on the matter. He does. I think his work on perception is especially relevant. He gives an account of the nature of perceptual experience that is remarkable both in how it departs from that of others in the phenomenological tradition, past and present, and for how it fits in among presently available views about the nature of perceptual experience. Before positively presenting Levinas' view on the matter, I first lay out what I take to be the consensus view among phenomenologists about the nature of perception. Levinas rejects more than he accepts of that orthodoxy, I argue, and holds a position that I contend should understood as a form of naïve realism.
Revised June 2017: I've re-written the Introduction to better communicate the paper's goals and added a final section to motivate Levinas's skepticism about the idea that horizons are a necessary and fundamental feature of perceptual experience.
Revised June 2017: I've re-written the Introduction to better communicate the paper's goals and added a final section to motivate Levinas's skepticism about the idea that horizons are a necessary and fundamental feature of perceptual experience.
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One way to defend humane animal agriculture is to insist that the deaths of animals aren't bad for them. Christopher Belshaw has argued for this position in the most detail, maintaining that death is only bad when it frustrates... more
One way to defend humane animal agriculture is to insist that the deaths of animals aren't bad for them. Christopher Belshaw has argued for this position in the most detail, maintaining that death is only bad when it frustrates categorical desires, which he thinks animals lack. We are prepared to grant his account of the badness of death, but we are skeptical of the claim that animals don't have categorical desires. We contend that Belshaw's argument against the badness of animal death relies on overly simplistic thought experiments and isn't sufficiently careful in how it attributes mental states to animals. We present some cases of animal behavior from recent work on animal cognition that are most plausibly understood as spurred by categorical desires and we show how an independently plausible account of mental content—Ruth Millikan's teleosemantics—supports our attribution of categorical desires in those cases. We end by arguing that even if you're wary of our reliance on teleosemantics, you should still accept it due to considerations about moral risk.
Access paper here: https://sites.google.com/site/mattembower/
Access paper here: https://sites.google.com/site/mattembower/
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Access here: https://sites.google.com/site/mattembower/ There is a longstanding debate among Husserl scholars about whether Husserl thinks perception involves mental representation. The debate, I believe, has not been settled. I deny... more
Access here: https://sites.google.com/site/mattembower/
There is a longstanding debate among Husserl scholars about whether Husserl thinks perception involves mental representation. The debate, I believe, has not been settled. I deny that the existentialist-inspired charge of representationalism about perception in Husserl is precise enough to stick. Given a clearer understanding of just what mental representation amounts to, I contend that those who defend Husserl against the accusation of representationalism fare little better than Husserl's existentialist-leaning critics. I argue that he is in fact a representationalist about perception insofar as it involves a noematic sense. Nevertheless, Husserl opens up the possibility for a representation-free form of perceiving in certain later discussions of the matter in which he suggests that some perceptual states lack noematic sense. What they lack in noematic sense is compensated for by other means, namely, by two sorts of affect and their functional interrelation with abilities for bodily movement. The texts that entertain this possibility, though, severely limit the scope of its actual occurrence. Husserl never commits to a generally or substantially non-representational view of perception. I attempt to sketch out, however, what this non-representationalism about perception that Husserl nearly landed on might look like, rearranging various more or less familiar elements already present in his theory of perception to that end.
There is a longstanding debate among Husserl scholars about whether Husserl thinks perception involves mental representation. The debate, I believe, has not been settled. I deny that the existentialist-inspired charge of representationalism about perception in Husserl is precise enough to stick. Given a clearer understanding of just what mental representation amounts to, I contend that those who defend Husserl against the accusation of representationalism fare little better than Husserl's existentialist-leaning critics. I argue that he is in fact a representationalist about perception insofar as it involves a noematic sense. Nevertheless, Husserl opens up the possibility for a representation-free form of perceiving in certain later discussions of the matter in which he suggests that some perceptual states lack noematic sense. What they lack in noematic sense is compensated for by other means, namely, by two sorts of affect and their functional interrelation with abilities for bodily movement. The texts that entertain this possibility, though, severely limit the scope of its actual occurrence. Husserl never commits to a generally or substantially non-representational view of perception. I attempt to sketch out, however, what this non-representationalism about perception that Husserl nearly landed on might look like, rearranging various more or less familiar elements already present in his theory of perception to that end.
Research Interests: Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Perception, Mental Representation, Phenomenology, and 11 moreContinental Philosophy, Edmund Husserl, Intentionality, Mental Representation and Content, Phenomenology of the body, Affect/Emotion, Husserl, Affect (Philosophy), Sensation and Perception, Affect, and Mental Representations
The relation of genetic phenomenology and the project of phenomenological reduction is the primary concern of this paper. We know that, despite Husserl's occasional loose references to " the " reduction, carrying out the reduction is... more
The relation of genetic phenomenology and the project of phenomenological reduction is the primary concern of this paper. We know that, despite Husserl's occasional loose references to " the " reduction, carrying out the reduction is anything but a single, one-off act. Husserl speaks of reduction in the plural in Ideas I and became increasingly preoccupied after the publication of Ideas I with identifying different " ways " to the reduction. I want here to delve into these intricacies with the aim of determining the place of genetic phenomenology within the whole of phenomenological technique. It will be necessary to both state in general terms what the aim of the reduction is and what the different ways to the reduction are before highlighting their inadequacy for dealing with genetic matters. If the latter point is correct, this brings us face to face with the underexplored possibility that there might be a peculiar, novel form of reduction or transformation of the reduction that is needed to lead the phenomenologist into genetic terrain. Following this line of thought, I sketch a distinct way into genetic phenomenology, which, I suggest, begins to appear most clearly in Husserl's later reflections on " abnormal " forms of experience.
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While classical phenomenology, as represented by Edmund Husserl’s work, resists certain forms of representationalism about perception, I argue that in its theory of “horizons,” it posits representations in the sense of content-bearing... more
While classical phenomenology, as represented by Edmund Husserl’s work, resists certain forms of representationalism about perception, I argue that in its theory of “horizons,” it posits representations in the sense of content-bearing vehicles. As part of a phenomenological theory, this means that, on the Husserlian view, such representations are part of the phenomenal character of perceptual experience. I believe that, although the intuitions supporting this idea are correct, it is a mistake to maintain that there are such representations defining the phenomenal character of low-level perception. What these representations are called on to explain, i.e., the phenomenal character of perceiving objects in their full presence can be more parsimoniously explained be appealing to certain affective states or affect schemas that shape the intentional directedness of low-level perceptual experience and define its phenomenal character in a non-representational way. This revision of the Husserlian view, it is shown, also helps us understand the normative character of perception.
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The issue of minimal cognition or basic mentality concerns the elementary ingredients of cognitive processes. Within the larger discourse of enactive and embodied cognition, a current of research has emerged endorsing the radical... more
The issue of minimal cognition or basic mentality concerns the elementary ingredients of cognitive processes. Within the larger discourse of enactive and embodied cognition, a current of research has emerged endorsing the radical proposal that basic minds neither represent nor compute, and, moreover, that the cognitive processes peculiar to them tend heavily (if not constitutively) to be both world-involving and to incorporate extra-neural bodily factors. Such a stance removes certain obstacles to a naturalistic view of basic minds and, at the same time, is more consistent with the idea of there being a deep continuity between life and mind. Here I suggest that the phenomenological tradition has resources for bolstering the case for radicalism about basic minds. Although the classical phenomenology of Husserl and Heidegger may be amenable to some form of representationalism, I propose a phenomenological corrective by appealing to the work of Levinas and Merleau-Ponty. Levinas ardently criticizes the representationalism of early phenomenology and places in its stead a non-representational account of “sensibility.” Merleau-Ponty, in addition, with his theory of (non-semantic) sense gives us a way of understanding basic minds synergistically, in terms of the perceiving organism’s embodied interactions with its surroundings, in a way supportive of the radical idea that basic minds are self-organizing dynamical systems.
Research Interests: Perception, Mental Representation, Embodied Cognition, Embodiment, Phenomenology, and 26 moreVisual perception, Embodied Mind and Cognition, Minimal Cognition, Émmanuel Lévinas, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Ecological Psychology, Intentionality, Affordance Theory, Levinas, Phenomenology of the body, Philosophy of perception, Heidegger, Husserl, Enaction (Psychology), Merleau-Ponty, Enactivism, Dynamical Systems Approach to Cognition, Affordances, Representation, Enactive cognition, J. J. Gibson, Embodied and Enactive Cognition, radical Embodied Cognitive Science, and Radical Enactivism
There is clearly some thematic overlap between the subject matter of Edmund Husserl’s genetic phenomenology and studies of cognitive development. I aim in this paper to clarify the nature of this overlap. This will, I hope, serve as an... more
There is clearly some thematic overlap between the subject matter of Edmund Husserl’s genetic phenomenology and studies of cognitive development. I aim in this paper to clarify the nature of this overlap. This will, I hope, serve as an indicator about whether genetic phenomenology might be able to shed some light on actual cognitive-development phenomena, as phenomenology has proven illuminating in other areas of psychology and cognitive science. To begin with, I differentiate two strands within Husserl’s genetic phenomenology, an idealized and a concrete approach. After providing a schematic outline of the former I argue that its application to actual, empirical cases of cognitive development faces serious challenges. I then set out the concrete approach, in two stages. First, I explain the importance of bodily experience on the concrete approach and note some affinities it has with the work of Piaget and embodied approaches to cognitive development. Second, I introduce the notion of affect as the engine of the developmental process on the concrete approach, an idea that, moreover, helps clarify how the concrete approach overcomes the problems facing the idealized approach. Finally, I propose that Vygotsky’s notion of the “zone of proximal development” can serve as a bridge between Husserl’s concrete approach and contemporary scaffolded and extended accounts of cognitive development.
Research Interests: Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Development Studies, Cognitive development, Embodied Cognition, and 13 moreChild Development, Embodiment, Phenomenology, Embodied Mind and Cognition, Continental Philosophy, Jean Piaget, Edmund Husserl, Extended Mind, Vygotsky, Affect/Emotion, Affect, Embodied and Enactive Cognition, and Genetic Phenomenology
The aim of this paper is to motivate the need for and then present the outline of an alternative explanation of what Dan Zahavi has dubbed “open intersubjectivity,” which captures the basic interpersonal character of perceptual experience... more
The aim of this paper is to motivate the need for and then present the outline of an alternative explanation of what Dan Zahavi has dubbed “open intersubjectivity,” which captures the basic interpersonal character of perceptual experience as such. This is a notion whose roots lay in Husserl’s phenomenology. Accordingly, section 1 begins by situating the notion of open intersubjectivity – as well as the broader idea of constituting intersubjectivity to which it belongs – within Husserl’s phenomenology as an approach distinct from his more well-known account of empathy (Einfühlung) in the Fifth Cartesian Meditation. In sections 2 and 3, respectively, I recapitulate and then criticize Zahavi’s phenomenological explanation of open intersubjectivity, arguing that his account hinges on a flawed phenomenology of perceptual experience. Section 4 supplies an alternative phenomenological framework for explaining open intersubjectivity, appealing to the methodological principles of Husserl’s genetic phenomenology and his theory of instinctive intentionality. Section 5 puts those principles to work using the resources of recent work in developmental studies and social cognition. There I discuss how infants learn about the world from others in secondary intersubjectivity through natural pedagogy. Lastly, section 6 closes the paper by showing how the discussion of infant development in section 5 explains the phenomenon of open intersubjectivity and by highlighting the relatively moderate nature of this account compared to Zahavi’s.
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In this paper I piece present an account of Husserl’s approach to the phenomenological reconstruction of consciousness’ immemorial past, a problem, I suggest, that is quite pertinent for defenders of Lockean psychological continuity views... more
In this paper I piece present an account of Husserl’s approach to the phenomenological reconstruction of consciousness’ immemorial past, a problem, I suggest, that is quite pertinent for defenders of Lockean psychological continuity views of personal identity. To begin, I sketch the background of the problem facing the very project of a genetic phenomenology, within which the reconstructive analysis is situated. While the young Husserl took genetic matters to be irrelevant to the main task of phenomenology, he would later come to see their importance and, indeed, centrality as the precursor and subsoil for the rationality of consciousness. I then argue that there is a close connection between reconstruction and genetic phenomenology, such that reconstruction is a necessary component of the program of genetic phenomenology, and I set out an argument of Husserl’s compelling one to enter into reconstructive territory. With that impetus, I schematically lay out the main contours one finds in Husserl’s practice of reconstructive techniques. We find him taking two distinct approaches, that of the individual viewed egologically (through the abstract lens of a single individual’s consciousness) and as embedded in interpersonal relations. Husserl occasionally calls these the approach “from within” and “from without,” respectively. Ultimately, the two approaches are not only complementary, but require one another. In closing, I argue that these considerations lead to a blurring of lines between the genetic and generative phenomenological registers, which challenges the prevalent view that there is a sharp demarcation of the two.
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Husserl’s theory of passive experience first came to systematic and detailed expression in the lectures on passive synthesis from the early 1920s, where he discusses pure passivity under the rubric of affection and association. In this... more
Husserl’s theory of passive experience first came to systematic and detailed expression in the lectures on passive synthesis from the early 1920s, where he discusses pure passivity under the rubric of affection and association. In this paper I suggest that this familiar theory of passive experience is a first approximation leaving important questions unanswered. Focusing primarily on affection, I will show that Husserl did not simply leave his theory untouched. In later manuscripts he significantly reworks the theory of affection in terms of instinctive intentionality and a passive experience of desire aimed at satisfaction and enjoyment. This paper will show that the theory of affection and the theory of instincts in Husserl are really one and the same, differing only in the superior theoretical apparatus with which Husserl treats the phenomenon in his more considered theory of the instincts. I demonstrate the connection between the two theories by showing how what he generically calls “affection” in earlier texts is the same phenomenon he calls “curiosity” in later texts. The connection is further supported by the way curiosity does the same work as affection in its function within Husserl’s theory of association, serving as the basic connective tissue linking diverse experiences. In closing, I deal with the problem of how to integrate the experience of the body into the theory of instincts, displaying in another way how Husserl improves his theory of affection by making it more concrete when he recasts it as a theory of instincts.
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In this paper I explore a curious phenomenon discussed in several of Husserl’s later manuscripts under the name “pre-world.” This is a notion that arises in the context of his ongoing development of a genetic phenomenology, that is, a... more
In this paper I explore a curious phenomenon discussed in several of Husserl’s later manuscripts under the name “pre-world.” This is a notion that arises in the context of his ongoing development of a genetic phenomenology, that is, a phenomenology that is concerned with the dynamics of conscious life and, more specifically, with the generation of new meaning for consciousness and new dimensions of conscious life. The pre-world is one such. I explore the phenomenon in this paper in two stages. First, I consider the prima facie unsavoriness of the very idea of a pre-world. After all, where is the subject, if not in the world? The metaphysical implications are suspect, on the surface. Nevertheless, I show that the pre-world puts the subject in contact with reality in a very special sense that should remedy this worry. Second, I show how the notion of the pre-world re-opens Husserl’s thought of the possible annihilation of the world from Ideas I. In fact, it explains the possibility, by revealing its experiential ground. Finally, I argue that what I call the “reality” of the pre-world is consistent with the aims of Husserl’s conception of the annihilation of the world in Ideas I.
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The full scope of enactivist approaches to cognition includes not only a focus on sensory-motor contingencies and physical affordances for action, but also an emphasis on affective factors of embodiment and intersubjective affordances for... more
The full scope of enactivist approaches to cognition includes not only a focus on sensory-motor contingencies and physical affordances for action, but also an emphasis on affective factors of embodiment and intersubjective affordances for social interaction. This strong conception of embodied cognition calls for a new way to think about the role of the brain in the larger system of brain-body-environment. We ask whether recent work on predictive coding offers a way to think about brain function in an enactive system, and we suggest that a positive answer is possible if we interpret predictive coding in a more enactive way, i.e., as involved in the organism’s dynamic adjustments to its environment.
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"In this paper we attempt to advance the enactive discourse on perception by highlighting the role of bodily affects as prenoetic constraints on perceptual experience. Enactivists argue for an essential connection between perception and... more
"In this paper we attempt to advance the enactive discourse on perception by highlighting the role of bodily affects as prenoetic constraints on perceptual experience. Enactivists argue for an essential connection between perception and action, where action primarily means skillful bodily intervention in one’s surroundings. Analyses of sensory-motor contingencies (as in Noë 2004) are important contributions to the enactive account. Yet this is an incomplete story since sensory-motor contingencies are of no avail to the perceiving agent without motivational pull in one direction or another or a sense of the pertinent affective contingencies. Before directly addressing the issue of affect in perception, we explain our peculiar, low-level conception of affect as a form of world-involving intentionality that modulates (minimally) bodily behavior without necessarily possessing informational value of any kind. We then address the deficiency concerning affect in enactive accounts of perception by examining some exemplary forms of bodily affect that constrain perception. We show that bodily affect significantly contributes to (either limiting or enabling) our contact with the world in our perceptually operative attentive outlook, in a kind of perceptual interest or investment, and in social perception."
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The present volume of Phenomenology and Mind is dedicated to the topic of habit, especially in its personal and social aspects. The phenomenological tradition has produced a number of interesting and fruitful reflections on habits,... more
The present volume of Phenomenology and Mind is dedicated to the topic of habit, especially in its personal and social aspects. The phenomenological tradition has produced a number of interesting and fruitful reflections on habits, importantly challenging the often too sharply drawn distinction between nature and culture. The notion of habit is crucial in understanding Husserl’s phenomenology. The ante-predicative framing of types in perception and the felt movement of the lived-body, the framing of position-takings in logically, evaluatively, and practically formed judgments, the rational stances one can adopt, e.g., in interpersonal discourse, or the attitudes shaping one’s conceptual grasp of the world – in all these instances conscious life decisively involves elements of habit (types, positions, stances, attitudes, etc.).
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I disclaim the need for a metaphysics for perception, in the sense of a general metaphysics, and suggest that the motivations for embarking on that project can be satisfied in an interesting way without any general metaphysical... more
I disclaim the need for a metaphysics for perception, in the sense of a general metaphysics, and suggest that the motivations for embarking on that project can be satisfied in an interesting way without any general metaphysical stock-taking, by appeal to phenomenological and enactive accounts of perception.
Research Interests: Cognitive Science, Philosophy of Mind, Epistemology, Perception, Constructivism, and 10 moreMental Representation, Phenomenology, Radical Constructivism, Philosophy of Cognitive Science, Philosophy of perception, Enaction (Psychology), Enactivism, Enaction, Philosophy of Mind and Metaphyics, and Radical Enactivism
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Translator’s note: The following translation is of a short passage from Die Einheit der Sinne (The Unity of the Senses) by Helmuth Plessner (1892-1985), a leading figure of twentieth century philosophical anthropology in Germany along... more
Translator’s note:
The following translation is of a short passage from Die Einheit der Sinne (The Unity of the Senses) by Helmuth Plessner (1892-1985), a leading figure of twentieth century philosophical anthropology in Germany along with Max Scheler and Arnold Gehlen. Originally published in 1923, Die Einheit der Sinne now appears in Volume III of Plessner’s collected works (Plessner 2003). The passage translated here (Plessner 2003, 293-305, 313-315) is extracted from the last section of that work, which is titled “The objectivity of the senses”. In this passage, Plessner recapitulates some of the major points of Die Einheit der Sinne in order to draw out their philosophical consequences. The theme of the work is what Plessner calls an “aesthesiology” of the senses. This project offers a philosophical account of the nature of sensory perception. Like some contemporary accounts of perception emphasizing its enactive and embodied character, Plessner’s aesthesiology does not neatly map onto the classic intellectualist picture of perception as the reception of information by a disembodied and disengaged mind.
Plessner seeks to shed light on the nature of the senses by contextualizing their qualitative aspects (i.e., as phenomenally conscious) within the whole person. Besides being phenomenally conscious in sensory perception, a person is an agent of “sense-bestowal” (Sinngebung) and is always attuned to the world in a certain bodily “stance” (Haltung). The sensory modalities, on Plessner’s view, are essentially interrelated with these mental and bodily phenomena, and only this integrated whole gives us genuine sensory perception. These ideas interestingly anticipate certain claims currently gaining more currency within philosophy of mind and cognitive science, like claims that action or the body is constitutively (rather than merely causally) bound up with perceptual experience. Severing the sensory modalities from their role in the mind’s sense-bestowing activity and its expression in the lived body (Leibkörper) is a dead end that will only obscure the nature of perceptual experience.
On the basis of the intimate unity of body, mind, and sensory modality in Plessner’s theory, the results of his aesthesiology are supposed to not only clarify the nature of sensory perception, but also the vexing and longstanding philosophical issues of how to understand the mind’s relation to the body and to the world. Plessner argues here that conceiving the sensory modalities as the interface between the mind and the body or the world is the only way to get past the difficulties inherent in various extant versions of dualism and monism. His proposal has the virtue that it brings mind and body or mind and world together without either interposing a dubious tertium quid or leaving unanswered precisely how all the terms in question interrelate. The sensory modalities are suitable for the task of crossing this metaphysical bridge due to their variety as types of intuition capable of making “objective” (presenting to phenomenal consciousness) both mental (in “encountering” intuition) and bodily or worldly (in “cognizant” intuition) events within a fundamentally unitary structure of intuition.
The following translation is of a short passage from Die Einheit der Sinne (The Unity of the Senses) by Helmuth Plessner (1892-1985), a leading figure of twentieth century philosophical anthropology in Germany along with Max Scheler and Arnold Gehlen. Originally published in 1923, Die Einheit der Sinne now appears in Volume III of Plessner’s collected works (Plessner 2003). The passage translated here (Plessner 2003, 293-305, 313-315) is extracted from the last section of that work, which is titled “The objectivity of the senses”. In this passage, Plessner recapitulates some of the major points of Die Einheit der Sinne in order to draw out their philosophical consequences. The theme of the work is what Plessner calls an “aesthesiology” of the senses. This project offers a philosophical account of the nature of sensory perception. Like some contemporary accounts of perception emphasizing its enactive and embodied character, Plessner’s aesthesiology does not neatly map onto the classic intellectualist picture of perception as the reception of information by a disembodied and disengaged mind.
Plessner seeks to shed light on the nature of the senses by contextualizing their qualitative aspects (i.e., as phenomenally conscious) within the whole person. Besides being phenomenally conscious in sensory perception, a person is an agent of “sense-bestowal” (Sinngebung) and is always attuned to the world in a certain bodily “stance” (Haltung). The sensory modalities, on Plessner’s view, are essentially interrelated with these mental and bodily phenomena, and only this integrated whole gives us genuine sensory perception. These ideas interestingly anticipate certain claims currently gaining more currency within philosophy of mind and cognitive science, like claims that action or the body is constitutively (rather than merely causally) bound up with perceptual experience. Severing the sensory modalities from their role in the mind’s sense-bestowing activity and its expression in the lived body (Leibkörper) is a dead end that will only obscure the nature of perceptual experience.
On the basis of the intimate unity of body, mind, and sensory modality in Plessner’s theory, the results of his aesthesiology are supposed to not only clarify the nature of sensory perception, but also the vexing and longstanding philosophical issues of how to understand the mind’s relation to the body and to the world. Plessner argues here that conceiving the sensory modalities as the interface between the mind and the body or the world is the only way to get past the difficulties inherent in various extant versions of dualism and monism. His proposal has the virtue that it brings mind and body or mind and world together without either interposing a dubious tertium quid or leaving unanswered precisely how all the terms in question interrelate. The sensory modalities are suitable for the task of crossing this metaphysical bridge due to their variety as types of intuition capable of making “objective” (presenting to phenomenal consciousness) both mental (in “encountering” intuition) and bodily or worldly (in “cognizant” intuition) events within a fundamentally unitary structure of intuition.
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The recently published volume Rasmus Thybo Jensen and Dermot Moran have put together, The Phenomenology of Embodied Subjectivity, displays the richness that phenomenological approaches to embodiment have to offer, both in terms of the... more
The recently published volume Rasmus Thybo Jensen and Dermot Moran have put together, The Phenomenology of Embodied Subjectivity, displays the richness that phenomenological approaches to embodiment have to offer, both in terms of the many insights of some of its major figures and as a style of inquiry that continues to be aptly deployed in diverse theoretical contexts. As such, the collection is accessible to a broad audience. The phenomenological perspectives represented are primarily those of Husserlian phenomenology and, to a lesser extent, the existential phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, and Heidegger. In most cases, only general familiarity with these varieties of phenomenology is presupposed, although some contributors stay very close to the texts they aim to elucidate and the peculiar idiom of those texts. Though the primary theoretical orientation of the various contributions is phenomenological, many of the contributions either engage non-phenomenological philosophy (e
Research Interests: Psychoanalysis, Depression, Embodied Cognition, Embodiment, Phenomenology, and 12 moreEmbodied Mind and Cognition, Continental Philosophy, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Edmund Husserl, Philosophy of Psychiatry, Intersubjectivity, Habitus, Jean Paul Sartre, Embodied Embedded Cognition, Anorexia Nervosa, Existentialism, and History of Philosophy
From the end of the review: "Based on the above, I think many of those seeking guidance about Husserl’s views on value, practical intentionality, and ethics will be disappointed with Ferrarello’s book. If my complaints are accurate, then... more
From the end of the review: "Based on the above, I think many of those seeking guidance about Husserl’s views on value, practical intentionality, and ethics will be disappointed with Ferrarello’s book. If my complaints are accurate, then the book will be of little benefit to a general audience not attuned to the nuances of contemporary Husserl scholarship. Husserl scholars will find some value in it. That will lie primarily in Ferrarello’s systematic approach. We get a better picture from Ferrarello about how everything fits together in Husserl’s theoretical framework when it comes to the topics of value, practical intentionality, and ethics. But that value is significantly offset by the overall paucity of detail about those main topics themselves. Even Husserl scholars will, I think, want to learn more about the core features of Husserl’s ethics. They too will want a picture of Husserl not at a distance, as a historical artefact, but as a thinker whose ideas have a place in the bigger picture of ethical theory and can thus be situated within both contemporary and historical trends of ethical thinking. It won’t profit them much to be guided once more through the well-trodden terrain to which Ferrarello would lead them in so many pages of her book containing lengthy forays about Husserl’s views on intentionality, psychologism, naturalism, empathy, founding (Fundierung), and many other subjects."
Research Interests: Philosophy, Ethics, Normative Ethics, Axiology, Phenomenology, and 10 moreContinental Philosophy, Edmund Husserl, Value Theory, Intentionality, Ethical Theory, Husserl, Practical Philosophy, Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, contemporary continental philosophy, axiology (theories and applied research on values), philosophical and cultural anthropology, diversity managment, gender studies, intercultural communication, and translations studies, History of Philosophy, and Phenomenological Ethics
It is now widely recognized that there are profound differences between various conceptions of embodiment among proponents of embodied cognition. Here, I am interested in the difference between what I call "shallow" and "deep" views,... more
It is now widely recognized that there are profound differences between various conceptions of embodiment among proponents of embodied cognition. Here, I am interested in the difference between what I call "shallow" and "deep" views, where shallow views hold that only intra-cranial explanatory factors are necessary for understanding cognitive processes (e.g., in emotion, action, and perception), whereas deep views maintain that somehow extra-cranial factors may also be explanatorily salient. Although the dialogue between phenomenology and philosophers of mind and cognitive science more broadly has been influential for certain proponents of embodied cognition, there is insufficient clarity among phenomenologists about whether their conceptions of embodiment ought to be understood as shallow or deep, or, indeed, whether they can speak to that distinction at all. I begin here to sort out this matter, suggesting that extant phenomenological views of embodiment are largely too ambiguous on this point, some appearing shallow-friendly, others deep-friendly. I consider and reject several reasons for supposing phenomenology cannot speak to the shallow/deep distinction, and present a tentative proposal for how phenomenology might go deep.
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Phenomenologists typically construe sensory perception as cognitively rich, by which I mean to say that it is characterized at least by intentionality, as well as being content-laden (whether conceptual or otherwise), representational,... more
Phenomenologists typically construe sensory perception as cognitively rich, by which I mean to say that it is characterized at least by intentionality, as well as being content-laden (whether conceptual or otherwise), representational, and, by virtue of the latter two characteristics, having a truth value. Furthermore, on some views it even carries epistemic import and enjoys its own quasi-logical relations (e.g., Husserl's theory of modalization). This cognitively rich view has come to be something of an orthodoxy in phenomenology. Emmanuel Levinas is, surprisingly, a defector from this orthodoxy in his understanding of sensation, a view I describe as cognitively deflated. I begin by quickly laying out Descartes' view of sensation, from which Levinas takes many cues for his own view, before contrasting it with the phenomenological orthodoxy, and then, finally, presenting an outline of Levinas' view as a retrieval and transformation of the Cartesian conception of sensation.
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The aim of the talk is to sort out different views of embodiment proposed by phenomenologists. The pertinent criterion for sorting these views would be whether and to what extent they provide an internalist-friendly or shallow story of... more
The aim of the talk is to sort out different views of embodiment proposed by phenomenologists. The pertinent criterion for sorting these views would be whether and to what extent they provide an internalist-friendly or shallow story of embodiment, i.e., only describing the experience of the body, which may in fact be realized entirely intra-cranially, without countenancing a deep, constitutive involvement of physical and biological features of the body in shaping mental life. I suggest claims about spatial orientation and kinesthesia (as found, e.g., in Husserl and Sartre) only support a shallow, internalist-compatible view, whereas claims about the prepersonal elements and synergistic dynamics of mental life (as found, e.g., in Merleau-Ponty and Levinas) lean in the direction of a deeper view of embodiment.
Research Interests: Philosophy of Mind, Perception, Mental Representation, Embodied Cognition, Embodiment, and 17 morePhenomenology, Embodied Mind and Cognition, Continental Philosophy, Émmanuel Lévinas, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Edmund Husserl, Levinas, Philosophy of Cognitive Science, Jean Paul Sartre, Philosophy of perception, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Enactivism, Sartre, Existentialism, Contemporary Continental Philosophy, and Embodied and Enactive Cognition
For nearly a century now phenomenology has been at the forefront of philosophical theories of the mind and its various capacities and activities that stress the intimate relation between subjectivity and the body. Although it is hardly... more
For nearly a century now phenomenology has been at the forefront of philosophical theories of the mind and its various capacities and activities that stress the intimate relation between subjectivity and the body. Although it is hardly the case that the various practitioners of phenomenology together advance a coherent platform, one might nevertheless generalize that phenomenology presents us with a theory of embodied subjectivity. And this is a key feature of the phenomenological tradition that has proved highly attractive to those in the analytic tradition working in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science. While a good deal of interaction across the analytic/continental divide on the topic of the embodied mind has profited from readings of Edmund Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Martin Heidegger, I would like to make the case here for the relevance of Emmanuel Levinas’ work to this ongoing discourse. We find in Levinas what I will call a “Radical Embodied Phenomenology” (REP), a title which bears a non-accidental resemblance to Anthony Chemero’s Radical Embodied Cognitive Science (RECS) (Chemero [2009], Radical Embodied Cognitive Science [Cambridge, MA: MIT Press]).
The core of RECS is, negatively, that cognition is non-representational, and, positively, that cognition is at bottom an activity that emerges from the interaction of brain, body, and world. Rather than necessarily engaging with internal stand-ins, this view presents cognitive feats as unmediated engagements with the world that take the adaptive form they do thanks to one’s more or less successful history of getting along in the world. On this view, cognition is an emergent activity, generated from the often chaotic interplay of mind, body, and world without any of these terms serving as a centralized control mechanism.
Levinas’ work presents us with the basic ingredients needed for REP, which complements and lends support to the more general view of RECS. Levinas, perhaps more than any other phenomenologist, strives to demarcate a fundamental domain of incarnate experience that is not amenable to representationalist explanations. For a phenomenology of embodiment to be truly radical, I suggest, it is necessary to be clear about the precise scope of phenomenology’s subject matter, and, in particular, to avoid locating it narrowly in the domain of conscious awareness; otherwise, the internalist will always have prima facie warrant to suppose that experience is subject-bound and representational. In this regard, Levinas’ analysis of “sensibility” (in contrast to sensation) and what he calls “enjoyment” in texts like Totality and Infinity and Otherwise than Being delivers the goods for REP. On his explicitly anti-representational analysis, sensibility is a form of experience that is embodied and presents a meaningful world, the meaning of which, importantly, exceeds the meaning bestowed upon it by conscious experience. Sensibility may plausibly be understood as an instance of mind-body-world self-organization – à la cognitive processes as construed by proponents of RECS – inasmuch as the meaning of the subject’s experience is decided by factors beyond the subject’s conscious awareness and agency.
The core of RECS is, negatively, that cognition is non-representational, and, positively, that cognition is at bottom an activity that emerges from the interaction of brain, body, and world. Rather than necessarily engaging with internal stand-ins, this view presents cognitive feats as unmediated engagements with the world that take the adaptive form they do thanks to one’s more or less successful history of getting along in the world. On this view, cognition is an emergent activity, generated from the often chaotic interplay of mind, body, and world without any of these terms serving as a centralized control mechanism.
Levinas’ work presents us with the basic ingredients needed for REP, which complements and lends support to the more general view of RECS. Levinas, perhaps more than any other phenomenologist, strives to demarcate a fundamental domain of incarnate experience that is not amenable to representationalist explanations. For a phenomenology of embodiment to be truly radical, I suggest, it is necessary to be clear about the precise scope of phenomenology’s subject matter, and, in particular, to avoid locating it narrowly in the domain of conscious awareness; otherwise, the internalist will always have prima facie warrant to suppose that experience is subject-bound and representational. In this regard, Levinas’ analysis of “sensibility” (in contrast to sensation) and what he calls “enjoyment” in texts like Totality and Infinity and Otherwise than Being delivers the goods for REP. On his explicitly anti-representational analysis, sensibility is a form of experience that is embodied and presents a meaningful world, the meaning of which, importantly, exceeds the meaning bestowed upon it by conscious experience. Sensibility may plausibly be understood as an instance of mind-body-world self-organization – à la cognitive processes as construed by proponents of RECS – inasmuch as the meaning of the subject’s experience is decided by factors beyond the subject’s conscious awareness and agency.
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This paper attempts to evaluate whether genetic phenomenology, as elaborated by Edmund Husserl, may contribute positively to our understanding of cognitive development. I differentiate two strands within genetic phenomenology, an... more
This paper attempts to evaluate whether genetic phenomenology, as elaborated by Edmund Husserl, may contribute positively to our understanding of cognitive development. I differentiate two strands within genetic phenomenology, an idealized and a concrete approach. Both approaches are briefly introduced and assessed in terms of their prospects for shedding light on cognitive development. I argue that the idealized view faces challenges to its application to actual, empirical cases of development, though, it may still be that some of its strategies may prove illuminating when lifted out of their idealized context. The concrete approach is more promising because it is directly applicable to actual subjects of development. Furthermore, the concrete approach has the advantage of greater consistency with work done in developmental studies, especially work stressing the embodied and anti-individualistic character of cognitive development. One major strength of the concrete approach, in this regard, is that it is revealing with respect to the integration of subpersonal and personal elements involved in developmental processes in a way that may be surprising due to the theory’s phenomenological nature.
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The overall goal of the present paper is to show the continued relevance of the project of Edmund Husserl’s genetic phenomenology to developmental studies. The problem I raise is that the account of genetic phenomenology familiar from... more
The overall goal of the present paper is to show the continued relevance of the project of Edmund Husserl’s genetic phenomenology to developmental studies. The problem I raise is that the account of genetic phenomenology familiar from the lectures on passive synthesis suggests a laborious, lengthy development of basic cognitive, i.e., perceptual capacities despite the fact that some non-human animals seem to be able to perceive their world just moments after being born. I address two questions this raises: (1) Just who is the subject of genetic phenomenology, and (2) how can genetic phenomenology cope with different developmental trajectories and the existence of something like the “innate?” With respect to (1), I show that Husserl actually had more than one approach to genetic matters, sometimes favoring a more abstract approach not meant to describe any actual subject of development, and that in several manuscripts he also deals with the peculiarities of species-specific genesis. Then, concerning (2), I suggest Husserl’s more concrete, species-sensitive approach can make the notion of innateness intelligible by shifting the emphasis from the laborious cultivation of memory to the different bodily abilities subjects come equipped with, which discharge in the form of instincts.
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In this paper I attempt to demonstrate the pertinence of phenomenology to the problem of the perception of causation. After setting the stage for the discussion with some introductory remarks, I present in outline Husserl’s account for... more
In this paper I attempt to demonstrate the pertinence of phenomenology to the problem of the perception of causation. After setting the stage for the discussion with some introductory remarks, I present in outline Husserl’s account for how we are supposed to perceive causal happenings. While I share Husserl’s intuition and general stance, i.e., that we do in fact perceive causal happenings, I argue that his explanation overburdens perception, inasmuch as it requires a consciousness of the rules governing causal contingencies. I introduce the experience of affect as a key ingredient to perceptual experience accounting for its intentional directedness to causal happenings. In closing, I offer some exemplary descriptions to make good on that claim, showing how both non-actualized causal dispositions and causal events can be perceived with the guidance of affect.
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While classical phenomenology, as represented by Edmund Husserl’s work, resists certain forms of representationalism about perception, I argue that in its theory of “horizons” or perceptual sense (understood in a quasi-Fregean manner), it... more
While classical phenomenology, as represented by Edmund Husserl’s work, resists certain forms of representationalism about perception, I argue that in its theory of “horizons” or perceptual sense (understood in a quasi-Fregean manner), it posits representations in the sense of content-bearing vehicles. As part of a phenomenological theory, this means that, on the Husserlian view, such representations are part of the phenomenal character of perceptual experience. I believe that, although the intuitions supporting this idea are correct, it is a mistake to maintain that there are such representations defining the phenomenal character of low-level perception. What these representations are called on to explain, i.e., the phenomenal character of perceiving objects in their full presence and/or with their dispositional or causal properties, can be more parsimoniously explained be appealing to certain affective states or affect schemas that shape the intentional directedness of low-level perceptual experience and define its phenomenal character in a non-representational way.
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"In this paper I offer some reflections on the timely and promising Husserlian notion of “constituting intersubjectivity.” This is the idea that other people figure in conscious experience not only as “objects” (in a suitably broad sense... more
"In this paper I offer some reflections on the timely and promising Husserlian notion of “constituting intersubjectivity.” This is the idea that other people figure in conscious experience not only as “objects” (in a suitably broad sense – certainly not as “mere things,” but also as they appear in practical involvements, ethical confrontations, etc.), i.e., as beings constituted and appearing as such for one in experience. Other people are, above and beyond that, present at the fountain of conscious experience. They are not only as its contents, but function to define the very parameters of experience, to give it meaning and open certain essential possibilities and avenues of experience.
After introducing this conception of intersubjectivity, I discuss Husserl’s treatment of it as interpreted by Zahavi (2001), Rodemeyer (2006), and Mensch (2010). While these proposals are laudable, at the very least because they bring this heretofore hidden dimension of subjectivity to the forefront of the discussion, I believe they are deficient in important respects. This deficiency is at least in part due to the undeveloped character of Husserl’s research on the subject. To make headway on this matter, I suggest Husserl’s discussion of the instincts can serve as a guide for further developments of the notion of constituting intersubjectivity. Indeed, Husserl himself (e.g., in certain texts from Huasserliana XV and Husserliana Materialen VIII) gives the instincts a role in coming to terms with the roots of our sociality. The instincts can serve as a model to the extent that they reveal the constituting function of our biological being. Certain features of that analysis can be retooled for the purposes of understanding the constituting function and dynamics of our sociality.
This path promises new insights, I further suggest, by allowing us to more carefully reflect on and integrate empirical findings about social cognition into the phenomenological analysis. In particular, developmental studies demonstrating the way caregivers shape the infant or young child’s experience can shed new light on the nature of constituting intersubjectivity. To that end, I briefly discuss empirical studies that indicate how the child’s affective and perceptual abilities are crucially nurtured and sustained by caretakers’ involvement in such a way that the interaction between child and caretaker is not merely the presentation of an alien subject, but, moreover, shapes the way the child sees the world in these diverse dimensions.
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After introducing this conception of intersubjectivity, I discuss Husserl’s treatment of it as interpreted by Zahavi (2001), Rodemeyer (2006), and Mensch (2010). While these proposals are laudable, at the very least because they bring this heretofore hidden dimension of subjectivity to the forefront of the discussion, I believe they are deficient in important respects. This deficiency is at least in part due to the undeveloped character of Husserl’s research on the subject. To make headway on this matter, I suggest Husserl’s discussion of the instincts can serve as a guide for further developments of the notion of constituting intersubjectivity. Indeed, Husserl himself (e.g., in certain texts from Huasserliana XV and Husserliana Materialen VIII) gives the instincts a role in coming to terms with the roots of our sociality. The instincts can serve as a model to the extent that they reveal the constituting function of our biological being. Certain features of that analysis can be retooled for the purposes of understanding the constituting function and dynamics of our sociality.
This path promises new insights, I further suggest, by allowing us to more carefully reflect on and integrate empirical findings about social cognition into the phenomenological analysis. In particular, developmental studies demonstrating the way caregivers shape the infant or young child’s experience can shed new light on the nature of constituting intersubjectivity. To that end, I briefly discuss empirical studies that indicate how the child’s affective and perceptual abilities are crucially nurtured and sustained by caretakers’ involvement in such a way that the interaction between child and caretaker is not merely the presentation of an alien subject, but, moreover, shapes the way the child sees the world in these diverse dimensions.
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No commentator on Husserl’s later philosophy can present it without at some point touching on his theory of affection. While he had formulated the rudiments of the theory by 1905, it does not feature prominently in early works like Ideas... more
No commentator on Husserl’s later philosophy can present it without at some point touching on his theory of affection. While he had formulated the rudiments of the theory by 1905, it does not feature prominently in early works like Ideas I. It is not until sometime between 1918 and 1920 that Husserl discovers its deep significance. When he comes to that realization, affection takes a life of its own, revolutionizing his phenomenology. I begin by describing the phenomenon of affection as understood by Husserl, piecing together both very early and late manuscripts to present the phenomenon in more complexity than is typically done. I show how the phenomenon of affection maps onto the foreground/background and intention/fulfillment structures of intentionality. I then move to discuss how that phenomenon revolutionizes Husserl’s philosophy. In his later work, he recasts affection as a ubiquitous feature of conscious life, a privileged status it has thanks to its function as a precondition for other forms of phenomenality. On the basis of that insight, he formulates a novel theory of the unity of conscious life rooted in affection. The unity of conscious life is explained by Husserl in terms of his idea of a universal teleology. The latter, I show, is underwritten by the affective intentionality of instincts, which have the remarkable property of operating independently from objectivating intentionality.
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In this paper I provide an interpretation of Husserl’s minimal conception of the world-horizon as a renewed transcendental aesthetic. The paper begins by briefly recapitulating Kant’s transcendental aesthetic, which is a springboard for... more
In this paper I provide an interpretation of Husserl’s minimal conception of the world-horizon as a renewed transcendental aesthetic. The paper begins by briefly recapitulating Kant’s transcendental aesthetic, which is a springboard for highlighting some features peculiar to Husserl’s approach to a transcendental aesthetic, such as his descriptive method, unique concept of intuition, and incorporation of causal and bodily experience. With that background, the second section gives a static account of the eidos of the minimal world-horizon as it is embodied in simple perceptual experience of objects in traversable space. This horizon is bound not to objects or groups of objects, but to the perceptual field itself, as the horizon keeping us tacitly conscious of a graduated series of other perceptual fields. The third section is transitional, introducing the lived-body as a key ingredient in the attempt to give a genetic account of the minimal conception of the world-horizon and outlining Husserl’s genetic account of the lived-body. The main task of this section is to paint in broad strokes a picture of how bodily lived-experience first gets organized into a system of bodily abilities. The fourth and final section explains how the results of Husserl’s genetic account of the lived-body reveal the genesis of the world-horizon as described in the second section of the paper. The world-horizon comes into being as a setting for arbitrarily repeatable enjoyment and engagement with objects in simple perceptual experience under the guidance of bodily instincts and the subject’s instinctive curiosity.
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Research Interests: Sociology, Philosophy of Mind, Ethics, Epistemology, Self and Identity, and 22 moreDevelopment Studies, Social Philosophy, Subjectivities, Embodied Cognition, Embodiment, Phenomenology, Continental Philosophy, Henri Bergson, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Edmund Husserl, Extended Mind, Intentionality, Habitus, Charles S. Peirce, Pierre Bourdieu, Wittgenstein, Naturalism, Ontogeny, Second nature, Felix Ravaisson, History of Philosophy, and Genetic Phenomenology
In this dissertation I provide an extensive interpretation of Husserl’s genetic phenomenology of the “world-horizon,” the sui generis form of intentionality that gives us a schematic awareness of what lies beyond our momentary present... more
In this dissertation I provide an extensive interpretation of Husserl’s genetic phenomenology of the “world-horizon,” the sui generis form of intentionality that gives us a schematic awareness of what lies beyond our momentary present experience. Chapter 2 begins with an account of Husserl’s static analyses, taking advantage of recently published manuscripts in which Husserl uses the tools of his eidetic method to ground his concept of the world-horizon. What we find is a minimal conception of the world-horizon as a spatiotemporal form for experience. The chapter ends with a look at how this minimal conception is related to practical and intersubjective forms of the world-horizon.
In Chapter 3 I provide motivation for a genetic analysis. It is spurred by the puzzle that intentional acts depend on extant horizons and horizons depend on previous intentional acts, generating an infinite regress. A genetic analysis of the world-horizon would resolve this paradox. Chapter 4 addresses some problems facing the project. First, I explain Husserl’s need to overcome the infinite regress because the subject is a being that is born and dies. Second, I confront the problem of genesis within the phenomenological reduction and I outline Husserl’s view of reconstruction of the immemorial past as latent in experience.
Chapter 5 embarks on the genetic analysis. I emphasize Husserl’s integration of affection and association in the theory of instincts out of which our practical abilities enabling perceptual contact with reality arise, resolving the regress described in Chapter 3. In the Conclusion I show how this theory demands a reconsideration of Husserl’s early discussion of the “annihilation of the world,” leading to a reversal of criticisms of his understanding of subjectivity made by Heidegger. I also consider some difficulties with Husserl’s theory and suggest where improvements and clarifications need to be made, indicating some possibilities for extending Husserl’s theory that are in step with contemporary developments.
In Chapter 3 I provide motivation for a genetic analysis. It is spurred by the puzzle that intentional acts depend on extant horizons and horizons depend on previous intentional acts, generating an infinite regress. A genetic analysis of the world-horizon would resolve this paradox. Chapter 4 addresses some problems facing the project. First, I explain Husserl’s need to overcome the infinite regress because the subject is a being that is born and dies. Second, I confront the problem of genesis within the phenomenological reduction and I outline Husserl’s view of reconstruction of the immemorial past as latent in experience.
Chapter 5 embarks on the genetic analysis. I emphasize Husserl’s integration of affection and association in the theory of instincts out of which our practical abilities enabling perceptual contact with reality arise, resolving the regress described in Chapter 3. In the Conclusion I show how this theory demands a reconsideration of Husserl’s early discussion of the “annihilation of the world,” leading to a reversal of criticisms of his understanding of subjectivity made by Heidegger. I also consider some difficulties with Husserl’s theory and suggest where improvements and clarifications need to be made, indicating some possibilities for extending Husserl’s theory that are in step with contemporary developments.
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One key difference between perceptual experience and thought is the distinctly sensory way perception presents things to us. Some philosophers nevertheless suggest this sensory phenomenal character doesn’t exhaust the way things are made... more
One key difference between perceptual experience and thought is the distinctly sensory way perception presents things to us. Some philosophers nevertheless suggest this sensory phenomenal character doesn’t exhaust the way things are made manifest to us in perceptual experience. Edmund Husserl is maintains that there is also a significant non-sensory side to perception’s phenomenal character. We may experience, for instance, an object’s facing surface in a sensory mode and, as part of the same perceptual experience, also that object’s out-of-view surface in a non-sensory mode. To the extent that perceptual experience makes things available to us in a non-sensory mode, Husserl calls it inadequate. Here I reconstruct four arguments for the conclusion that perceptual experience is inadequate found in various of Husserl’s writings and critically evaluate then. My aim is both to showcase the variety and sophistication of Husserl’s reasons for thinking perceptual experience is inadequate and to problematize that idea.
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Numerous philosophers – both in recent history, like Edmund Husserl, and in our time, like Alva Noë – have held that we visually experience objects' occluded parts, such as the out-of-view exterior of a voluminous, opaque object. The gist... more
Numerous philosophers – both in recent history, like Edmund Husserl, and in our time, like Alva Noë – have held that we visually experience objects' occluded parts, such as the out-of-view exterior of a voluminous, opaque object. The gist of the case for this idea is that it best explains the fact that we see objects as whole or complete despite having only a part of them in view at any given moment. My aim in this paper is to explain why this idea and the case for it should be rejected. It's not a phenomenological datum that we experience objects' occluded parts and the reasons for thinking we do, I argue, aren't compelling. Furthermore, I anticipate and reply to attempts to salvage the idea by appeal to purported perceptual expectation and amodal completion. Lastly, I deal with potential concerns that the only way to capture the phenomenal character of perceiving voluminous objects is to say experience outstrips what's in view, providing a description of such experience without any implication of that idea.